I have a project to send sensor info from my garden to my home PC via my wifi network. The hardware in use is the Uno WiFi Rev2 with the Keystudio solar charging shield. Power comes from a 5 volt, 10W solar panel and the battery is a 3700mAh LiPo. The software works great and Arduino sends the data to a MySQL database at 30 minute intervals. To reduce power the software disconnects from WiFi once the data is sent and only reconnects after a 30 min delay. The idle period is just a simple delay() cycle. The power consumption with this arrangement is around 200mA during the data collection/transmission (duration around 10s) and around 90mA during the idle period. The problem is that the power consumption is still too high for the solar system to keep the battery charged. I need to find a way to reduce the consumption. I reckon about 30mA would do it. I'm not sure how to do this for the WiFi rev 2 board (most of the info out there only refers to the Uno). Also , I assume the presence of the solar shield is going to complicate matters. Maybe I should avoid the shield altogether, but I'm not sure how to do this, as the shield makes all the solar side of things very easy. Any help greatly appreciated!
The easiest approach would be to add a separate board to power up and down the Arduino system at regular intervals. This might be all you need: Adafruit TPL5111 Low Power Timer Breakout : ID 3573 : $5.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
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